Shane

by Jack Schaefer

THE LITERARY WORK

A novel set in the Wyoming Territory in 1889; published in 1949.

SYNOPSIS

A strange gunfighter with a mysterious past suddenly appears in a small Wyoming valley. After siding with a local homesteading family in their fight against a cattle baron, the gunfighter is forced to partake in a lite-or-death shootout on the homesteaders’ behalf.

Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place

The Novel in Focus

Events in History at the Time the Novel Was Written

For More Information

Born in 1907 in Cleveland, Ohio, Jack Schaefer studied history as well as classical and American literature throughout his life. He was especially drawn to the history of the western United States, although he did not travel to that area until after he published Shane. His first novel, Shane appeared as a magazine serial before being published in its final hardback version in 1949. It is considered a classic representative of a distinct literary genre, the Western.

Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place

Cattle barons

Cattlemen generally moved into frontier territory after explorers and trappers, but before farmers. After the Civil War, many ranchers occupied the Great Plains, moving large cattle herds from Texas to markets up north. During this time the Great Plains was a largely unsettled region with vast expanses of open land claimed by the U.S. government. Ranchers, especially in the 1870s, enjoyed free use of this government land to graze their cattle. The open range cattle herds required thousands of acres in order to survive, since ranchers left the tough breeds to fend for themselves during the winter. Depending on the quality of the grazing land, each animal required from 20 to 130 acres.

Such large land requirements compelled the ranchers to occupy more land than they could legally own. Under law, ranchers might only obtain as much as 1,100 acres. Some ranchers obtained extra land by convincing their cowboy employees to file for homesteads with the federal government and subsequently transfer the titles to the ranchers. These claims were usually fraudulent since the cowboys neither settled nor cultivated the land as required. Ranchers also obtained prime grazing land under other laws such as the Desert Act, which allowed people to purchase up to 640 acres of desert. Only one-seventh of the Wyoming Territory had been surveyed, so cattlemen easily claimed prime grazing lands as desert there. Most ranchers, however, simply squatted—that is, settled on the land without permission to do so and without paying rent—a practice considered legal until the government decided to use the surplus land. The cattle baron in Schaefer’s novel, Luke Fletcher, acquires his land in this way.

Open range grazing practices were tolerated only because there was plenty of space. During the 1880s, however, the region became overstocked and overgrazed. In 1879 Wyoming supported 450,000 cattle; only six years later, the number of cattle roaming the territory had increased to 1.5 million.

Harsh weather during the winter of 1886-87 decimated the cattle population, leaving the survivors nearly unfit for market. Some historians estimate the loss at three or four hundred thousand out of two million cattle. During this time of economic hardship, homesteaders started moving into Wyoming, placing further land pressures upon the hard-pressed cattlemen. Shane refers to the mounting tension caused by their arrival:

He [Fletcher] had been running cattle through the whole valley at the time the miners arrived, having bought or bulldozed the few small ranchers there ahead of him. A series of bad years working up to the dry summer and terrible winter of ’86 had cut his herds about the time the first of the homesteaders moved in and he had not objected too much. But now there were seven of us in all and the number was rising each year.

(Schaefer, Shane, p. 46)

Such conflicts of interest eventually generated severe hostilities between the cattle barons and the small ranchers, sheepherders, and farmers of the region. These hostilities culminated in the Johnson County War of 1892, a three-day battle in which the cattlemen and their hired gunfighters declared open warfare on the entire county in order to evict small interests.

Homesteaders

The Homestead Act of 1862 granted 160 acres of land as a homestead in the West to the head of a family or to anyone twenty-one years of age. The act endured, with various modifications, until 1977. In order to obtain the land, the government required the homesteader to pay a small fee, live on the land for five years, and improve the property in particular ways.

Homesteading on the Great Plains proved difficult. The better lands fell into the hands of the railroads and speculators, leaving poorer, hardto-farm land for the homesteaders. In the rainy East, farmers easily profited from 160 acres. A farm of equal size on the dry plains, however, left many homesteaders impoverished. People often referred to the Homestead Act as the government’s bet: 160 acres of land against the homesteader’s survival skills.

Although the act entitling them to land was passed in 1862, homesteaders did not settle the Great Plains for several years. After 1870, however, settlers quickly spread throughout the region. Between 1870 and 1900, homesteaders occupied 430 million acres of public land. Often called “nesters,” these homesteaders comprised an important civilizing force in frontier society. Their predecessors, the trappers, explorers, and ranchers, had generally not established permanent settlements. The farmers, however, brought wives, children, and the trappings of eastern civilization. The novel Shane features a settlement in which “there were several stores, a harness and a blacksmith shop, and nearly a dozen houses. Just the year before, the men had put together a one-room schoolhouse” (Shane, p. 46).

The nesters often clashed with ranchers when they laid claim to the public lands. Accustomed to grazing their herds on these lands, the ranchers resented the homesteader’s intrusion and considered them a threat. Meanwhile, many homesteaders, such as the novel’s Joe Starrett, recognized the wastefulness of open range ranching:

Listen to me, Shane. The thing to do is pick your spot, get your land, your own land. Put in enough crops to carry you and make your money play with a small herd, not all horns and bone, but bred for meat and fenced in and fed right. I haven’t been at it long, but already I’ve raised stock that averages three hundred pounds more than that long-legged stuff Fletcher runs on the other side of the river and it’s better beef, and that’s only a beginning.

(Shane, p. 7)

Sometimes, the ranchers and homesteaders quarreled over water sources. Settlers often claimed areas near streams, thereby separating the cattle from water. Cattlemen, in turn, diverted whole streams under the pretense of irrigation in order to provide water for their cattle and thus cut off the homesteader’s water supply. In fact, access to water is one reason why Luke Fletcher wants to buy the homesteaders’ land. “I’ll be wanting all the range I can get from now on. Even without that, I can’t let a bunch of nesters keep coming in here and choke me off from my water rights” (Shane, p. 95).

Women on the frontier

Although cooking and other domestic skills played an important and time-consuming role in the life of pioneer women, western life also liberated women from many traditional roles they occupied in the East. Wyoming, for example, shocked the East when it became the first state or territory in the nation to enfranchise women in 1869. On the frontier, women often worked in nontraditional roles; they labored in the fields, rode horses in pants or split skirts, and drove cattle. Many learned to shoot and hunt. At times women took up arms to protect land claims; some even turned into gunslinging outlaws. Thousands of women homesteaded their own land; in fact, by 1900,10 percent of all homesteaders were women.

Law in the Wyoming Territory

Many forms of popular culture portray the frontier as a violenceridden place. In reality, it was often quite peaceful. Theft was rare, since resources were plentiful and neighbors were scarce. Settlers, cowboys, and others generally welcomed strange travelers like Shane into their houses or settlements to eat and spend the night. Many left the doors to their houses or businesses unlocked. In fact, many houses and business lacked doors altogether. The owner assumed people were honest until proven otherwise, and society respected a person’s word as a solid bond. Vendors often sold goods on credit to both regular customers and strangers, and sometimes people rode hundreds of miles in order to pay a debt.

Formal government, however, was loose and often unavailable. As the character Bob Starrett notes in the novel:

We knew, too, how far away the government was from our valley way up there in the Territory. The nearest marshal was a good hundred miles away. We did not even have a sheriff in our town. There never had been any reason for one. When folks had any lawing to do, they would head for Sheridan, nearly a full day’s ride away.

(Shane, p. 45)

Furthermore, local governments were easily influenced by local strongmen, such as the novel’s Luke Fletcher: “Even if we had had a sheriff, he would have been Fletcher’s man. Fletcher was the power in the valley in those days” (Shane, p. 46). Under such conditions, the line between criminals and law enforcers was often blurry.

Some residents reacted by taking the law into their own hands. Such incidents in the novel as the killing (at Fletcher’s behest) of Ernie, a homesteader who refuses to sell his land, were not unusual. In 1889, for example, cattle king Albert Bothwell lynched a man and a woman, accusing them of cattle rustling. In reality, the couple had claimed a homestead on Bothwell’s open range along an important water source.

People sometimes formed vigilante groups when they thought the judicial system failed, such as on occasions when courts ignored or freed people who had allegedly committed homicide. In such instances, vigilante groups sometimes took it upon themselves to enact the death penalty. Besides punishing criminals, these groups sometimes stepped in to settle personal disputes under the guise of “justice.” When Wyoming gained statehood in 1890, vigilante groups remained active despite the burgeoning judicial system.

Gunfighters

During the settlement of the frontier, gun ownership was much more common in the West than in the East. Some westerners became expert shooters, willing to risk their lives in gunfights for any number of reasons. These gunfighters play a prominent role in the history and legends of the West and include such infamous names as Doc Holliday, the Earp brothers, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy.

Certain attributes became associated with gunfighters. While they came from all types of backgrounds, many, like Shane, were Southerners, since ex-soldiers from the Confederate Army headed West in great numbers after their defeat in the Civil War. Found on both sides of the law, gunfighters were admired as well as hated. They could be cattle rustlers or sheriffs; often they were both. Most preferred to cultivate an aura of mystery in order to intimidate their enemies.

Even in their own time, gunfighters inspired the mixture of fear and awe that the Starretts felt in Shane’s presence. The public often exaggerated the gunfighters’ skills and reputations. In reality, smoky gunpowder and woefully inaccurate firearms often handicapped the gunfighters. Despite wild claims, a man was considered a good shot if he could hit another man fifteen yards away.

Since gunfighters often did not care on which side of the law they fought, many worked as mercenaries. During the 1880s, cattlemen hired gun-fighters such as Stark Wilson to protect their range interests from sheepherders, small ranchers, homesteaders, and rustlers. These hired men earned good wages, taking in approximately $100 to $150 a month, three times the salary of a U.S. marshal. Some earned as much as $200 a month, while one Wyoming fighter charged a flat rate of $500 per rustler caught.

The Novel in Focus

The plot

In the summer of 1889, Bob Starrett, the young son of homesteaders Joe and Marian Starrett, observes a mysterious, well-dressed stranger riding into the small Wyoming valley in which his family lives. The stranger’s worn yet elegant appearance and his courteous behavior impress the Starrett family. Although the stranger merely requests the use of their water pump, Joe invites him to dinner and to spend the night. The stranger, who introduces himself simply as “Shane,” accepts the invitation. Although Shane is amiable, the Starretts also perceive him as a mysterious and somewhat dangerous man. Despite this impression, however, they and Shane take an immediate liking to one another. Shane converses with Marian about the latest fashions in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and talks with Joe about the farm. Bob simply holds Shane in awe.

The following day, Joe shows Shane his farm, pointing out a particularly strong and heavy stump that he has not yet uprooted. “That was the one bad spot on our place. It stuck out like an old scarred sore in the cleared space back of the barn—a big old stump, all jagged across the top” (Shane, p. 12). Ledyard, the local salesman, arrives and attempts to sell Joe a cultivator (a farm tool used to break up the soil) at an unfair price. Shane says that he has recently seen the same cultivator for sale at a much cheaper price. Taking Shane at his word, Joe refuses to buy the cultivator at Ledyard’s inflated price. The incident begins a long-lasting friendship between Shane and Joe. Ledyard huffily leaves, and soon afterward Shane picks up an ax and starts to hack at the stubborn stump. Joe picks up a second ax, and the two men cement their friendship by working together the entire day to uproot the old stump.

As Shane prepares to leave the next day, Joe tells him of the current land disputes between homesteaders, such as himself, and Luke Fletcher, a large rancher who grazes his cattle on public land. Noting that his previous farmhand left town after a brawl with Fletcher’s men, Joe asks Shane to help him for the summer. Shane agrees.

Tensions between Fletcher and the homesteaders mount toward the end of the summer, when Fletcher obtains a beef contract and insists on his right to graze his cattle on the homesteaders’ land. He offers to buy their farms, but the homesteaders, several of whom now own their land, decide not to sell. Shane comes to represent the homesteaders’ resistance, and the group rallies around Joe Starrett, their reluctant leader.

One day, as Shane sits in the town saloon, one of Luke Fletcher’s cowboys insults him and challenges him to a fight. Shane realizes that Chris, the young cowboy, is only acting on Fletcher’s orders, and he leaves the saloon in order to avoid fighting. Both sides misinterpret Shane’s reaction. Convinced that Shane does not have the stomach for a fight, Fletcher and his men begin to harass and insult the farmers with greater frequency, and the farmers soon resent Shane. Their resentment forces him to return to the saloon to face Chris. Shane demonstrates his deadly prowess by breaking Chris’s arm and knocking him out cold in approximately thirty seconds.

Although Shane’s quick disposal of Fletcher’s henchman brings temporary peace to the valley, violence soon flares again. Five of Fletcher’s men attack Shane at the saloon. The din of the pitched battle attracts Joe, who helps Shane win the brawl. The victory, however, only further angers Fletcher, who realizes that none of his men can beat Shane. Fletcher finally hires Stark Wilson, a gunslinger with a murderous reputation, to intimidate and even kill the homesteaders if necessary.

Eventually Wilson and Fletcher arrive at the Starrett farm. Fletcher offers to buy Joe’s farm and hire him on at his ranch, stating that he will wait for Joe’s answer at the saloon. Shane recognizes that if Joe refuses the offer, Fletcher and Wilson may kill him. Shane subsequently knocks Joe out and goes in his stead to meet Wilson and Fletcher.

The climax of the novel is a classic gunfight. Wilson accepts Shane’s challenge to a duel in the saloon. When the smoke clears, Wilson is dead and Shane is wounded. Fletcher shoots at Shane from a hiding place on the balcony, but misses. Shane promptly kills him too. He then leaves the saloon, remarking to the stunned crowd that “I’ll be riding on now. And there’s not one of you that will follow” (Shane, p. 112). Young Bob, who witnessed the whole scene, realizes that Shane is badly hurt and runs after him. But Shane simply and gently says good-bye, and rides off.

Sources

Jack Schaefer worked as a journalist and edited a small magazine when he wrote Shane in 1945 and 1946. He often relaxed by reading American history as well as writing short stories. Schaefer noted, “I was getting books to review, and I was happiest and felt most at home west of the Mississippi River. Out here it is so neglected—one of the greatest periods in history, neglected by historians and writers alike. … I was not reading Westerns then. I read history” (Schaefer in Nuwer, p. 278). Schaefer decided to write a basic legend about the West. The characters are fictitious and little information is available about their possible origins. Shane, however, is similar in character to Schaefer’s father, and may have been based on him.

Events in History at the Time the Novel Was Written

Westerns and pulp literature

During the early 1900s, popular fiction became widely available to the reading public in the form of cheap fiction magazines, commonly known as pulp magazines. In 1896 Frank Munsey established his magazine Argosy as one that would carry only adult fiction. Printed on wood-pulp paper, the magazine sold for a dime on the newsstands and ushered in the era of pulp fiction. Generally, pulps were slick-covered magazines that contained illustrations. Their stories were often sensational, exploiting themes of sex and violence. Detective stories and Westerns quickly became standard pulp fare in the early 1900s, while later pulps developed the genres of romance, horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

The popularity of pulps declined rapidly after World War II, when paperbacks emerged as a cheap alternative to hard-bound books. In 1945 Argosy changed into an adventure magazine, but it continued to publish books in traditional pulp genres such as the Western. Shane was originally published in Argosy in 1946 as a three-part serial called Rider from Nowhere. Argosy marketed Rider from Nowhere as a pulp Western, using traditional pulp illustrations and captions designed to sell magazines and capture the reader’s attention. Shane was released as a hardback in 1949 and maintained a prominent place in Western literature thereafter.

Reviews

Although Shane has been translated into over thirty languages and more than seventy editions have been published, it has never been classified as a bestseller. Yet the novel has continually received praise when reviewed. Over the years many authors and critics have cited Shane as one of the best representatives of the Western genre. In 1985 the Western Writers Association voted Shane one of a handful of the most important Westerns of all time. The comments of Al Chase of the Chicago Sunday Times, writing in 1949, typify reaction to Schaefer’s novel:

Altho ‘Shane’ is not another ‘Virginian,’ it has the same quality, dignity and appeal which made Owen Wister’s famous novel of years ago read by people who scoffed at ‘Westerns.’ It’s a tragic, taut little tale of a grim, unforgettable, mysterious and at times sinister figure of a man.

(Chase in Jones, p. 813)

Postwar domesticity

World War II constituted a time of great uncertainty and change for many Americans. Not surprisingly, at the end of the war Americans renewed their focus on home and family, values that permeated the late 1940s and 1950s. People emphasized materialism and consumerism as well as social and familial stability. The age at which the average woman married dropped nearly a full year, from twenty-one to twenty. Between 1940 and 1960 the birthrate rose rapidly, creating the baby-boom generation. Advertisers and other shapers of popular culture cultivated the image of the housewife, and public figures extolled the virtues of motherhood and the importance of a woman’s devotion to house and home. Jack Schaefer’s Marian Starrett character seems to directly reflect the domestic emphasis of this period. Marian’s chief occupation and first love is cooking, an activity that keeps her close to home.

Despite the emphasis on domestic roles, however, greater numbers of older married women began to enter the labor force in the post-World War II period. By 1950 the number of American wives working outside the home had risen to 21 percent. Unlike the mavericks on the 1880s frontier, however, most of these working women stepped into jobs considered appropriate for females, securing employment as garment workers, salespersons, teachers, or nurses.

For More Information

Etulain, Richard W., and Michael T. Marsden. The Popular Western. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1974.

Jones, Mertice M., Dorothy Brown, and Gladys M. Dunn, eds. The Book Review Digest. Vol. 45. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1950.

Larson, T. A. Wyoming: A Bicentennial History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977.

Myres, Sandra L. Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800-1915. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.

Nuwer, Henry Joseph. “An Interview with Jack Schaefer: May 1972.” In Shane: The Critical Edition. Edited by James C. Work. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

Shaefer, Jack. Shane: The Critical Edition. Edited by James C. Work. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

Trachtman, Paul. The Gunfighters. New York: Time-Life Books, 1974.